Be a Better Writer--CAPITALIZING PRONOUNS FOR GOD
Posted: Sat Sep 26, 2015 9:21 am
Few issues of writing mechanics carry with them faith-related baggage, but the issue of whether or not to capitalize pronouns that pertain to God certainly does. As much as possible, I hope to address this from the standpoint of making your writing publishable and effective. It’s not theology, it’s writing.
First, here’s a note from the 2004 version of Zondervan’s publication The Christian Writer’s Manual of Style:
“Capitalize all commonly accepted names for the persons of the Trinity. Also capitalize names of deities from other faiths and from mythology. Lowercase, however, the pronouns referring to persons of the Trinity (and deities of other religions).”
My cousin, Steve Buttry, who is a journalism professor and was once the religion editor of the Des Moines Register, tells me that AP style (used by most news organizations) also recommends lowercase pronouns for the deity.
I realize that flies in the face of what many of us are familiar with—we’ve seen those uppercase pronouns in hymnals and poetry and Christian writing all our lives. But in contemporary writing, in most cases, those pronouns should be written in lowercase, for the following reasons:
1. Capitalization (or lack thereof) is not used to indicate respect. If that were the case, we’d see sentences like
The Teacher won an award for Her program of supplying free backpacks.
Similarly, we don’t write
In 1945, hitler and his troops were facing sure defeat.
The function of capitalization is to distinguish specific people or places (Piper, Indiana) from general ones (granddaughter, state).
2. Capitalizing divine pronouns dates your writing. The capitalizations (along with obsolete language like thy and doest) are remnants from an earlier age.
Using capitalized divine pronouns will look very strange to younger readers who are not accustomed to seeing the older way of writing, and to non-believers or people who are new to faith. In fact, it may be rather off-putting to them in its oddness. We certainly don’t want to cause readers to stop reading what we’ve written because they are discomforted by the mechanics. We don’t want our writing conventions to make the readers feel like we’re part of a club with arcane rules, and they’re standing on the outside.
3. Some might say that it’s necessary to use the capitalized He to distinguish Jesus from other males who are on the scene. That should not be an issue for good writers, any more than it’s necessary to use different fonts to distinguish pronouns in any scenario in which there are two or more people of the same gender present.
4. I haven’t looked at every version of the Bible, but of the ones I examined online, only two (the NASV and the NKJV) used capitalized divine pronouns. Many very popular translations (ESV, KJV, NIV, RSV, MSG, ASV, TLE…) use lowercase pronouns for the divinity.
I know some of you are shouting at your computers right now, and that you’ll always continue to capitalize He and Him and His when referring to God or Jesus or the Holy Spirit. To you, I’d say this:
• If that’s where you’re most comfortable, by all means, do it. I’m the person who creates lyrics slides for my church, and I capitalize them on those slides, because that’s more comfortable for my community of believers. However…
• If you’re looking to get your writing published, check with the style guides of that publication. Some will insist on lower case, and you’ll want to comply with their wishes. Some will insist on capitalization, and you’ll want to know that, too.
• Please consider carefully how you’ll deal with this if your audience is younger people or the unchurched. Their comfort level may be more important than your own, if your writing is going to reach them. However, if your audience is older Christians who are accustomed to the capitalized pronouns, continue doing that.
My idea for this lesson came about when I was editing a book for FaithWriter Sally Hanan this week. She chose to use lowercase pronouns, and when I asked her for her reason, she told me this: “Pronouns were never capitalized until someone decided it would be more reverent to do so for God, but I'm pretty sure that person was not an editor. While it always feels good to honor God is whatever way possible, adding capital letters to pronouns should never be one of them--doing so leads to a murky path of adding capitals all over the page and never knowing where to stop.” By the way, you can get her book, Empower Yourself, here.
A few final notes: If you’re quoting from the Bible, use the capitalization style of the version you’re quoting. If that version has lowercase divine pronouns, you have to use them in your quoted verse(s). The opposite is also true.
In view of #1 above, the word Satan should be capitalized. It has nothing to do with respect. It’s just the way English works.
Finally, I’ve frequently been surprised to see Bible written in lower case in Writing Challenge entries. It’s always capitalized, as the title of a specific book. Strangely, the adjective biblical is lowercase (I don’t know why). The word Scripture is not so cut-and-dried; I can find sites that say to capitalize it, and others that say the opposite. You can pick.
HOMEWORK:
If you’re one of those people who will always use capital letters for divine pronouns, I’d love to read your response to the numbered items above. Don’t worry that you’ll hurt my feelings, or that a fight will break out. As I mentioned, I do it both ways, depending on my audience, and I’m truly interested in having a friendly conversation on this.
The Manual of Style that I referred to in this lesson used to be available online, but no longer. I’ve excerpted their discussion of this issue and parked it here. If you’re interested in reading it, you’ll see an expanded discussion of my numbered points. Is there anything there that you’d like to respond to?
Finally, if you haven’t noticed yet, there are three new ‘sticky’ posts at the top of this forum. The top one has these writing lessons grouped into several courses that may be of interest to you. The second one is a course especially chosen for beginning writers. The final list is of all the courses, in alphabetical order so they’ll be easy for you to browse for specific topics.
First, here’s a note from the 2004 version of Zondervan’s publication The Christian Writer’s Manual of Style:
“Capitalize all commonly accepted names for the persons of the Trinity. Also capitalize names of deities from other faiths and from mythology. Lowercase, however, the pronouns referring to persons of the Trinity (and deities of other religions).”
My cousin, Steve Buttry, who is a journalism professor and was once the religion editor of the Des Moines Register, tells me that AP style (used by most news organizations) also recommends lowercase pronouns for the deity.
I realize that flies in the face of what many of us are familiar with—we’ve seen those uppercase pronouns in hymnals and poetry and Christian writing all our lives. But in contemporary writing, in most cases, those pronouns should be written in lowercase, for the following reasons:
1. Capitalization (or lack thereof) is not used to indicate respect. If that were the case, we’d see sentences like
The Teacher won an award for Her program of supplying free backpacks.
Similarly, we don’t write
In 1945, hitler and his troops were facing sure defeat.
The function of capitalization is to distinguish specific people or places (Piper, Indiana) from general ones (granddaughter, state).
2. Capitalizing divine pronouns dates your writing. The capitalizations (along with obsolete language like thy and doest) are remnants from an earlier age.
Using capitalized divine pronouns will look very strange to younger readers who are not accustomed to seeing the older way of writing, and to non-believers or people who are new to faith. In fact, it may be rather off-putting to them in its oddness. We certainly don’t want to cause readers to stop reading what we’ve written because they are discomforted by the mechanics. We don’t want our writing conventions to make the readers feel like we’re part of a club with arcane rules, and they’re standing on the outside.
3. Some might say that it’s necessary to use the capitalized He to distinguish Jesus from other males who are on the scene. That should not be an issue for good writers, any more than it’s necessary to use different fonts to distinguish pronouns in any scenario in which there are two or more people of the same gender present.
4. I haven’t looked at every version of the Bible, but of the ones I examined online, only two (the NASV and the NKJV) used capitalized divine pronouns. Many very popular translations (ESV, KJV, NIV, RSV, MSG, ASV, TLE…) use lowercase pronouns for the divinity.
I know some of you are shouting at your computers right now, and that you’ll always continue to capitalize He and Him and His when referring to God or Jesus or the Holy Spirit. To you, I’d say this:
• If that’s where you’re most comfortable, by all means, do it. I’m the person who creates lyrics slides for my church, and I capitalize them on those slides, because that’s more comfortable for my community of believers. However…
• If you’re looking to get your writing published, check with the style guides of that publication. Some will insist on lower case, and you’ll want to comply with their wishes. Some will insist on capitalization, and you’ll want to know that, too.
• Please consider carefully how you’ll deal with this if your audience is younger people or the unchurched. Their comfort level may be more important than your own, if your writing is going to reach them. However, if your audience is older Christians who are accustomed to the capitalized pronouns, continue doing that.
My idea for this lesson came about when I was editing a book for FaithWriter Sally Hanan this week. She chose to use lowercase pronouns, and when I asked her for her reason, she told me this: “Pronouns were never capitalized until someone decided it would be more reverent to do so for God, but I'm pretty sure that person was not an editor. While it always feels good to honor God is whatever way possible, adding capital letters to pronouns should never be one of them--doing so leads to a murky path of adding capitals all over the page and never knowing where to stop.” By the way, you can get her book, Empower Yourself, here.
A few final notes: If you’re quoting from the Bible, use the capitalization style of the version you’re quoting. If that version has lowercase divine pronouns, you have to use them in your quoted verse(s). The opposite is also true.
In view of #1 above, the word Satan should be capitalized. It has nothing to do with respect. It’s just the way English works.
Finally, I’ve frequently been surprised to see Bible written in lower case in Writing Challenge entries. It’s always capitalized, as the title of a specific book. Strangely, the adjective biblical is lowercase (I don’t know why). The word Scripture is not so cut-and-dried; I can find sites that say to capitalize it, and others that say the opposite. You can pick.
HOMEWORK:
If you’re one of those people who will always use capital letters for divine pronouns, I’d love to read your response to the numbered items above. Don’t worry that you’ll hurt my feelings, or that a fight will break out. As I mentioned, I do it both ways, depending on my audience, and I’m truly interested in having a friendly conversation on this.
The Manual of Style that I referred to in this lesson used to be available online, but no longer. I’ve excerpted their discussion of this issue and parked it here. If you’re interested in reading it, you’ll see an expanded discussion of my numbered points. Is there anything there that you’d like to respond to?
Finally, if you haven’t noticed yet, there are three new ‘sticky’ posts at the top of this forum. The top one has these writing lessons grouped into several courses that may be of interest to you. The second one is a course especially chosen for beginning writers. The final list is of all the courses, in alphabetical order so they’ll be easy for you to browse for specific topics.